During World War II, an American navy ship is sunk by a Japanese submarine leaving 890 crewmen stranded in shark infested waters.
The harrowing true story of the crew of the USS Indianapolis, who were stranded in the Philippine Sea for five days after delivering the atomic weapons that would eventually end WWII. As they awaited rescue, they endured extreme thirst, hunger, and relentless shark attacks.—Anonymous
In 1945, the US are having difficulty in dislodging the Japanese from Asia. The Japanese are entrenched in Okinawa, which is the gateway to the Japanese main islands. Any US troops approaching Okinawa are heavily attacked by aerial dive bombers and ground troops.A ground invasion of Japan would be costly in human KIA. So, the plan is to deliver an atomic bomb over Japan. But no plane has that kind of range, so the bomb has to be shipped to the Philippines. The plan is made to ship it on a single, unprotected military ship, with no escort, so as to escape attention of the Japanese fleet.
USS Indianapolis is chosen for the job. Captain Charles McVay knows that this is a suicide mission. The ship is a heavy cruiser effective against ships & aircraft but unprotected against submarines. Heavy Cruisers always have an escort of destroyers blocking submarines ahead of it. The destroyers and detect and destroy submarines with depth charges.But this time, the escort is not provided. In case of a torpedo attack, the ship will have 4 minutes to evacuate. The ship can zigzag to escape Japanese submarines, but cannot outrun suicide small, manned subs, Kaitens, that can be launched by Japanese Subs.
Rear Admiral William S. Parnell (James Remar) ordered McVay to undertake the mission even though he had 9 new officers and 215 new enlisted men in the crew. The repairs from the previous Kamikaze attack (when a Japanese plane stuck the front side of the ship) were still being carried out. The ship was anchored at San Francisco.In 1945, the Portland-class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, commanded by Captain Charles McVay (Nicolas Cage), delivers parts of the atomic bomb that would later be used to level Hiroshima during the ending of World War II. The bomb is delivered to Tinian Mariana Islands on July 26th, 1945.
The crew includes Lieutenant Adrian Marks (Thomas Jane), Chief Petty Officer Brian "Bama" Smithwick (Matt Lanter), Petty Officer Third Class West (Cody Walker), Lieutenant Standish (Callard Harris), Lieutenant Wilbur "Chuck" Gwinn (Max Ryan) and Mike D'Antonio (Adam Scott Miller), among others. The crew feel they are unlucky since the ship is 13 years old.Even after delivering the bomb, the ship is denied their escort as the US Navy wanted to keep the mission top secret and providing an escort would have revealed their presence in the Islands.The ship leaves Tinian base on July 27th 1945, with 1197 men on board.
While patrolling in the Philippine Sea, on July 30 in 1945, the ship is spotted by a Japanese Submarine. The commander of the I58 was considered cursed as he had been at sea for 4 years but with zero confirmed kills. A few days earlier the same submarine had spotted a merchant ship and launched a Kaiten, but missed again, bringing great anguish to the commander.The submarine spots the heavy cruiser and launches a Kaiten. The first torpedo hits at 00:14 hrs. USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) submarine I-58
The strike from the submarine sinks the ship, taking 300 crewmen with it to the bottom of the Philippine Sea, while the rest climb out of the ship and are left stranded at sea for five days without food, water and left among shark-infested waters. The next morning there are 912 men in the sea alive. After 2 days there are 698 men left. Day 3, 500 men. Day 4, 350 men.
With no hope for five days, most of the remaining crew-members are eaten by sharks or die of salt-water poisoning by drinking seawater (which also caused some of those injured to die from wounds infections). Others swim off from their groups after hallucinating of a non-existent island, to which they were never to be seen again. On the 5th day, the surviving crew are rescued by an airplane pilot who spots them by chance and calls for a rescue.
The Japanese submarine lies in wait & sees that for 5 days no rescue was available for the dying men. The submarine is ordered to return home. The USS Indianapolis had sent 3 SOS messages before being sunk, and the Japanese submarine transmission were also intercepted by the Philippines land command of the US Navy, yet nobody responded as they thought it could be an enemy transmission trying to draw the defensive forces from the base out into open sea. This was a major incompetence of the US military which the politicians wanted to hide.
Only 317 survive the disaster. Looking for a scapegoat for their own gross negligence, the US Navy court-martials and convicts Captain McVay for "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag", despite overwhelming evidence supporting McVay (such as even having the former captain of the IJN's I-58 submarine to testify for the trial, which proved McVay to be not at fault). McVay is told by the admiral in private that 4 days before sinking of the Indianapolis, a merchant ship was also sunk and thus Indianapolis should have received an escort. But he does not admit this publicly.
It ends with Captain McVay finally committing suicide years after the tragedy after being harassed and tormented with phone calls and mail from angry and grief-stricken relatives of the deceased crew-members, as well as the media (mostly in the form of newspapers, which placed the blame on him for the ship's sinking).
The Japanese Submarine commander returned to Japan & retired. But in 1999 he joined all the survivors to exonerate Captain McVay. In 2000, Bill Clinton exonerated Captain McVay of all charges.
